Hard fought draw with Garvey twos

It has been a challenging start to the Junior One League campaign for North Down seconds and last weekend’s fixture was no different as the Comber men hosted perennial favourites Lisnagarvey seconds at Comber Leisure Centre.

The game started as a cagey affair with North Down sitting back and allowing the visitors to comfortably settle into the game.  The home defence, ably marshalled by Paul Adgey, was in sound shape with Reece Glover in nets being a relative spectator in the first quarter. After the first quarter break the North Down men grew in confidence with chances starting to be created at both ends and the pace of the game increased which saw the on looking socially distanced crowd growing in support. North Down had the better of the chances with Scott Moore, Dermot Gouk and Phil Wilson all having good opportunities to score but being denied by the Lisnagarvey keeper.

The half finished scoreless with North Down having the better of the chances and at the beginning of the second half they kept this momentum going. On 41 minutes North Down got the breakthrough with Michael Orr scoring a rare but well converted goal.  A series of further chances fell to the home team who were unlucky not to further increase their lead. With time running out in the final quarter North Down came under increased pressure as Garvey won a series of short corners and in the final few minutes one of these shorts was converted with a well worked deflection giving Reece Glover no chance in goals.

The final score was 1-1 with the Comber men feeling slightly disheartened not to have taken all three points from the game. This Saturday it’s another difficult one as they aim to get back to winning ways travelling to play Instonians seconds.

Burch Autos Man of the Match was Andrew McGimpsey.